BC + AI
Public-source recordOperating

Fir at the Cedar Supercomputing Centre, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby

What the public record shows

Publicly funded compute in B.C. with a published allocation mechanism and almost no published facility data.

Fir is a research cluster at the Cedar Supercomputing Centre on Simon Fraser University's Burnaby campus, funded by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, the B.C. Knowledge Development Fund and partners, and announced as online on 2025-09-15. Access is allocated nationally through default accounts, the Rapid Access Service and a peer-reviewed Resource Allocation Competition. It is included here as the public comparator case: the only record in this release with a published, checkable access mechanism.

What is missing

  • No facility electrical load, cooling design, water use or heat recovery is published. The only power figure available is the 475.73 kW measured during the TOP500 benchmark run of the GPU partition, which is not a facility load.
  • The 17,000-user figure describes the whole centre rather than Fir, and no utilisation percentage is published.
  • No British Columbia or public-interest allocation reservation is published on the retrieved pages.

Last reviewed . Verification state: official-source. Fairness review: not-required. Each identified subject gets a factual correction opportunity before any record containing ownership, control or adverse material is indexed. A correction opportunity is a fairness step, not a veto over sourced public-interest reporting. Corrections go through the contact route.

Registry ID
PC-FAC-004
Aggregation review
not-reviewed

Identity, ownership and control

Who owns and operates the record, with protected commercial detail withheld by reason category instead of silently deleted.

  • Simon Fraser University

    host-institutionReported
    Effective from
    2025-09-15
    Review status
    verified

  • Digital Research Alliance of Canada

    funder-allocatorReported
    Effective from
    2025-09-15
    Review status
    verified
  • Ownership percentProtected
  • Control mechanismProtected

Location and authority context

General public location at a security-appropriate precision. Parcel detail is protected, and First Nations process fields are Nation-controlled.

General location
Simon Fraser University Burnaby campus, Burnaby, British Columbia. Campus-level precision only.
Municipality or regional district
City of Burnaby
Land tenure category
not-disclosed
Coordinate precision
campus
Watershed
unknown
Grid / service territory
unknown; no retrieved source states the electricity service arrangement for the centre
  • Parcel/site identifierProtected
  • First Nations process statusNation-controlled
  • Nation-approved public summaryNation-controlled
  • Sensitive receptor / emergency contextProtected

The registry does not identify or determine rights holders, consultation or accommodation duties, or consent. Potentially affected Nations are identified only through authoritative processes.

Lifecycle and milestones

Planned versus actual dates stay separate, and a missing date stays visibly unknown.

Electricity and grid

Requested, allocated, contracted and connected MW are four different fields. This record shows each one separately with its own state and evidence.

  • Requested MW

    Committed / expectedNot applicable

    Not applicable

    Boundary and method
    Fir is an installed cluster inside an existing university facility rather than a new utility interconnection (PC-SRC-107), and no capacity request is on the public record.
    Supply / service class
    not-applicable
    Additionality
    not-applicable

  • Allocated MW

    Actual / deliveredUnknown

    Unknown

    Boundary and method
    No public allocation record for the Cedar Supercomputing Centre has been retrieved; the host announcement (PC-SRC-107) states none.
    Supply / service class
    unknown
    Additionality
    no claim

  • Contracted MW

    Actual / deliveredUnknown

    Unknown

    Boundary and method
    No public contracted capacity for the Cedar Supercomputing Centre has been retrieved; the host announcement (PC-SRC-107) states none.
    Supply / service class
    unknown
    Additionality
    no claim

  • Connected MW

    Actual / deliveredUnknown

    Unknown

    Boundary and method
    The centre operates (PC-SRC-107), so a connected load exists. No public source states it, and the benchmark power figure below is not a substitute.
    Supply / service class
    unknown
    Additionality
    no claim

  • Peak demand

    Actual / deliveredReported

    0.476 MW

    Boundary and method
    TOP500 measured power for the GPU partition during the High Performance Linpack run, published as 475.73 kW and recorded here as 0.47573 MW (PC-SRC-108). This is a benchmark-run measurement of one partition. It is not a facility electrical load, not a building peak, and not an annual average.
    Supply / service class
    unknown
    Additionality
    no claim
  • Grid upgrade / cost responsibilityProtected

Water, cooling, heat and backup generation

PUE and WUE only appear with their boundary, period, method context and assurance status. Heat that exists is not heat that is reused.

  • Annual consumption

    Actual / deliveredUnknown

    Unknown

    Measurement boundary
    No boundary published.
    Method and climate/load context
    No public water figure for the Cedar Supercomputing Centre has been retrieved; the host announcement (PC-SRC-107) states none.
    Assurance status
    not-reviewed
    Water source / cooling mode
    not-disclosed
    Heat quality and availability
    not-applicable

Environmental and physical impacts

Baseline, forecast and actual values stay separate, with permits and conditions cited where they exist.

    Employment, procurement and community commitments

    Committed numbers and delivered numbers are different claims. Each row is labelled as one or the other.

      • Agreement / milestoneProtected

      Indigenous ownership, governance and data arrangements

      This entire table is Nation-controlled. Nothing from it serializes to the public projection, this page, exports or metadata.

      Collection, interpretation, use, retention and publication of this field family are governed by the relevant Nation or authorized body. The registry publishes it only where disclosure is authorized, and no such authorization exists for any current record. Review rules PC-REV-001 and PC-REV-002 in the canonical pack keep this exclusion in force until authorized reviewers clear them.

      • Indigenous governance record IDNation-controlled
      • Facility IDNation-controlled
      • Arrangement typeNation-controlled
      • Agreement existence / statusNation-controlled
      • Nation-approved public summaryNation-controlled
      • Data-governance arrangementNation-controlled
      • Disclosure authority referenceNation-controlled
      • Disclosure review dateNation-controlled
      • Disclosure classNation-controlled
      • Value stateNation-controlled

      Benefits, procurement, equity or revenue arrangements are never a substitute for rights, title, consultation, accommodation, consent or Nation decision authority.

      Compute, sovereignty and access

      Compute capacity appears only with its workload, precision and period context. There is no cross-hardware league table, and security detail stays protected.

      • installed

        Reported

        19.96

        Capacity metric
        19.96 PFlop/s maximal achieved High Performance Linpack performance (Rmax) for the GPU partition, against a theoretical peak of 33.32 PFlop/s across 92,160 cores.
        Method, period and context
        TOP500 submission listed in 2025 for the GPU partition only, at a submitter-chosen problem size (Nmax 2,485,248). Linpack measures one dense linear-algebra workload. It is not a general measure of AI training capability and is not comparable across hardware without a stated workload and precision.
        Access program / audience
        research
        Eligibility, price and allocation
        Access is granted through the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Default access follows account creation, additional capacity is available through the Rapid Access Service, and larger requests go through the peer-reviewed Resource Allocation Competition, which is open to applicants holding Faculty, Adjunct Faculty and Librarian positions (PC-SRC-109). The retrieved pages publish no price and no British Columbia or public-interest reservation.
        Utilization / delivered outcome
        SFU states the Cedar Supercomputing Centre serves more than 17,000 users, about 70 percent of them outside British Columbia (PC-SRC-107). That figure describes the centre rather than Fir alone, and no utilisation percentage is published.
      • Hardware category / generationProtected
      • Residency, control, support, and operationsProtected
      • Security attestationProtected

      Approvals, reporting and compliance

      Instruments, conditions, filings and reported compliance, with the issuing authority named.

        • Decommissioning obligation / securityProtected

        Commitments versus delivered performance

        A commitment is not delivered performance. Targets and actuals sit side by side, and a missing actual stays visibly unreported.

        • access

          Reported

          The Digital Research Alliance of Canada allocates access to Fir through default access on account creation, the Rapid Access Service, and the peer-reviewed Resource Allocation Competition (PC-SRC-109).

          Commitment target
          No public value
          Delivered actual
          Not yet reported
          Unit and period
          ongoing; no published quota for British Columbia based or public-interest users
          Due date / status
          ongoing; open

        Material changes and version history

        Corrections and revisions append history instead of overwriting it. Superseded values stay on the record.

        Sources and verification

        Every value on this page traces to one of these sources, each with its verification status, effective period and review dates.